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Written by Miljan Stamenkovic
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Thursday, 15 February 2007 |
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Page 3 of 3 We used some older cards from ATI X1000 family for the test, the X1800XT cards. These cards are based on well-known ATI R520 chip. Motherboard used for these two cards in CrossFire Mode was ASUS A8R32-MVP based on ATI RD580 chip. Processor used was AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+.
It is very important that if X1800 and X1900 cards are in CrossFire mode, you must have one „master“ and one „slave“ card, when you want to assemble CrossFire system. If you use ATI card from X1300/X1600 series, you don’t need either master card or CrossFire cable, but simply put both cards on their places and they will be mutually connected directly via PCI-Express route in so-called “Native CrossFire”.
We had to connect our X1800XT cards with CrossFire cable included in package with Master card which we are to install in first PCI-Express slot. Once cards are positioned, we finally start operation called overclock.
First and basic rule which you must fulfill is installing of complete Catalyst Control Center (hereinafter refer to as ATI CCC). After you installed ATI CCC, it is necessary to start it, select Advanced option and in the end of the list within option General Settings select CrossFire. Just simply check “Enable CrossFire”. This will enable work with two cards.
Next you should do is turning off both “ati2evxx.exe” services from Windows Task Manager (ctrl+alt+delete).These are processes which are allegedly referred to ATI Hotkey Manager, but some of more experienced overclockers claim that these processes just exploit system resources, and when they are active, overclock is less for few percents.
When finished, install ATITool. When you start ATITool, you will see standard frequencies of your card on the main screen. Since you determined memory and chip frequencies, click on „settings“ button to open options for fan, voltage, scanning of artifact, fine settings of driver etc.
When you enter to “settings“ option in first dropping menu, select overclocking, then in other dropping menu (this option is opened only within CrossFire system) select desired card. In case of X1800XT card is ”0x7109, bus1, dev:0“ then it is MASTER, and ”0x7100,bus2,dev:0” it is SLAVE card. When you select desired Master/Slave cards, don’t click on Back button right away to get back to main menu of ATI Tool, in order to increase chip and memory frequencies, but first set voltage and number of fan rotations. Recommended voltage settings for ATI R520 X1800XT card are as follow:
VGPU=1.350V for graphic chip, MVDDC=2.097V for memory chips, MVDDQ=2.097V for memory buffer. Voltage is to be changed when in option settings from the first dropping menu we select “Voltage Control” for each card separately.
Fan rotation control is to be changed from the same dropping menu by selecting “Fan Control”. We found an optimal solution with settings shown in the picture.
When you set voltages and fans for both cards, you can click on Back button and start increasing operating frequencies. Test samples reached 702MHz for chip and 1602MHz for memory. For each card separately you must set up voltages and frequencies as well as number of fan rotations.
Paired cards in “CrossFire” stood up 3DMark tests and few days of game play, and they didn’t show a sign of weakness. Overclock was successful and brought us more points in 3D Mark as well some pleasant playing of some more demanding games. For someone, maybe it’s enough to simply assemble or buy finished CrossFire System and do not to touch anything, but each overclocker simply must use such potential 100%. In order to run successful operation, you will need too much patience but it is finally worth it.
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